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　　LETTER 467

　　CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

　　[P.M. December 5, 1828.]

　　Dear B.B.—I am ashamed to receive so many nice Books from you, and to have none to send you in return; You are always sending me some fruits or wholesome pot-herbs, and mine is the garden of the Sluggard, nothing but weeds or scarce they. Nevertheless if I knew how to transmit it, I would send you Blackwood's of this month, which contains a little Drama, to have your opinion of it, and how far I have improved, or otherwise, upon its prototype. Thank you for your kind Sonnet. It does me good to see the Dedication to a Christian Bishop. I am for a Comprehension, as Divines call it, but so as that the Church shall go a good deal more than halfway over to the Silent Meeting house. I have ever said that the Quakers are the only Professors of Christianity as I read it in the Evangiles; I say Professors—marry, as to practice, with their gaudy hot types and poetical vanities, they are much at one with the sinful. Martin's frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C.L. say what he please to the contrary. Of the Poems, I like them as a volume better than any one of the preceding; particularly, Power and Gentleness; The Present; Lady Russell—with the exception that I do not like the noble act of Curtius, true or false, one of the grand foundations of old Roman patriotism, to be sacrificed to Lady R.'s taking notes on her husband's trial. If a thing is good, why invidiously bring it into light with something better? There are too few heroic things in this world to admit of our marshalling them in anxious etiquettes of precedence. Would you make a poetn on the Story of Ruth (pretty Story!) and then say, Aye, but how much better is the story of Joseph and his Brethren! To go on, the Stanzas to "Chalon" want the name of Clarkson in the body of them; it is left to inference. The Battle of Gibeon is spirited again—but you sacrifice it in last stanza to the Song at Bethlehem. Is it quite orthodox to do so. The first was good, you suppose, for that dispensation. Why set the word against the word? It puzzles a weak Christian. So Watts's Psalms are an implied censure on David's. But as long as the Bible is supposed to be an equally divine Emanation with the Testament, so long it will stagger weaklings to have them set in opposition. Godiva is delicately touch'd. I have always thought it a beautiful story characteristic of old English times. But I could not help amusing myself with the thought—if Martin had chosen this subject for a frontispiece, there would have been in some dark corner a white Lady, white as the Walker on the waves—riding upon some mystical quadruped —and high above would have risen "tower above tower a massy structure high" the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor Cross would scarce have known itself among the clouds, and far above them all, the distant Clint hills peering over chimney pots, piled up, Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring Spectator (admirer of a noble deed) might have gone look for the Lady, as you must hunt for the other in the Lobster. But M. should be made Royal Architect. What palaces he would pile—but then what parliamentary grants to make them good! ne'ertheless I like the frontispiece. The Elephant is pleasant; and I am glad you are getting into a wider scope of subjects. There may be too much, not religion, but too many good words into a book, till it becomes, as Sh. says of religion, a rhapsody of words. I will just name that you have brought in the Song to the Shepherds in four or five if not six places. Now this is not good economy. The Enoch is fine; and here I can sacrifice Elijah to it, because 'tis illustrative only, and not disparaging of the latter prophet's departure. I like this best in the Book. Lastly, I much like the Heron, 'tis exquisite: know you Lord Thurlow's Sonnet to a Bird of that sort on Lacken water? If not, 'tis indispensable I send it you, with my Blackwood, if you tell me how best to send them. Fludyer is pleasant. You are getting gay and Hood-ish. What is the Enigma?

　　money—if not, I fairly confess I am foiled—and sphynx must [here are words crossed through] 4 times I've tried to write eat—eat me—and the blotting pen turns it into cat me. And now I will take my leave with saying I esteem thy verses, like thy present, honour thy frontispicer, and right-reverence thy Patron and Dedicatee, and am, dear B.B.

　　Yours heartily, C.L.

　　Our joint kindest Loves to A.K. and your Daughter.

　　[Barton's new book was A New Year's Eve and other Poems, 1828, dedicated to Charles Richard Sumner, Bishop of Winchester. This volume contains Barton's "Fireside Quatrains to Charles Lamb" ("ed in Vol. IV.) and also the following "Sonnet to a Nameless Friend," whom I take to be Lamb:—

　　SONNET TO A NAMELESS FRIEND

　　In each successive tome that bears my name

　　Hast thou, though veiled thy own from public eyes,

　　Won from my muse that willing sacrifice

　　Which worth and talents such as thine should claim:

　　And I should close my minstrel task with shame,

　　Could I forget the indissoluble ties

　　Which every grateful thought of thee supplies

　　To one who deems thy friendship more than fame.

　　Accept then, thus imperfectly, once more,

　　The homage of thy poet and thy friend;

　　And should thy partial praise my lays commend,

　　Versed as thou art in all the gentle lore

　　Of English poesy's exhaustless store,

　　Whom I most love they never can offend.

　　Martin's frontispiece represented Christ walking on the water. Lamb recalls his remarks in a previous letter about this painter, who though he never became Royal Architect was the originator of the present Thames Embankment. Macaulay, in his essay on Southey's edition of the Pilgrim's Progress, in the Edinburgh for December, 1831, makes some very similar remarks about Martin and the way in which he would probably paint Lear.

　　In the poem "Lady Rachel Russell; or, A Roman Hero and an English Heroine Compared," Barton compared the act of Curtius, who leaped into the gulf in the Forum, with Lady Russell standing beside her lord.

　　Chalon was the painter of a portrait of Thomas Clarkson.

　　The "Battle of Gibeon" is a poem inspired by Martin's picture of Joshua; the last stanza runs thus:—

　　Made known by marvels awfully sublime!

　　Yet far more glorious in the Christian's sight

　　Than these stern terrors of the olden time,

　　The gentler splendours of that peaceful night,

　　When opening clouds displayed, in vision bright,

　　The heavenly host to Bethlehem's shepherd train,

　　Shedding around them more than cloudless light!

　　"Glory to God on high!" their opening strain,

　　Its chorus, "Peace on Earth!" its theme Messiah's reign!

　　"In the Lobster." Referring to that part of a lobster which is called Eve.

　　"The Elephant." Some mildly humorous verses "To an Elephant."

　　"As Sh. says of religion"—Shakespeare, I assume, in "Hamlet," III., 4, 47, 48:—

　　And sweet Religion makes

　　A rhapsody of words.

　　I "e in the Appendix the poem which Lamb liked best. Barton had written a poem called "Syr Heron." This is Lord Thurlow's sonnet, of which Lamb was very fond. He "ed it in a note to his Elia essay on the sonnets of Sidney in the London Magazine, and copied it into his album:—

　　TO A BIRD, THAT HAUNTED THE WATERS OF LACKEN, IN THE WINTER

　　O melancholy Bird, a winter's day,

　　Thou standest by the margin of the pool,

　　And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school

　　To Patience, which all evil can allay.

　　God has appointed thee the fish thy prey;

　　And giv'n thyself a lesson to the fool

　　Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule,

　　And his unthinking course by thee to weigh.

　　There need not schools, nor the professor's chair,

　　Though these be good, true wisdom to impart:

　　He, who has not enough, for these, to spare,

　　Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart,

　　And teach his soul, by brooks, and rivers fair:

　　Nature is always wise in every part.

　　"Fludyer" was a poem to Sir Charles Fludyer on the devastation effected on his marine villa at Felixstowe by the encroachments of the sea. The answer to the enigma, Mrs. FitzGerald (Lucy Barton) told Canon Ainger, was not money but an auctioneer's hammer.

　　Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Holcroft, dated December 5, 1828. Louisa Holcroft was a daughter of Thomas Holcroft, Lamb's friend, whose widow married Kenney. A good letter with some excellent nonsense about measles in it.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6